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Wednesday, February 20, 2013

What if God told you to kill someone?

Atheists,
as well as some theological liberals, like to ask this question to make
Christians squirm. It’s intended to create a dilemma. If the Christian says
“No,” then the atheist will gleefully exclaim, “So why do you believe those Old
Testament commands about killing”? But if the Christian says “Yes,” then the
atheist will gleefully exclaim, “That just goes to show how dangerous religion
is. It will make you do anything. Suspend your normal moral inhibitions.”

So how should a Christian answer this question?

i) We should begin by pointing out that it’s a trick
question. It’s intended to trap the Christian into giving the wrong answer
however he responds. But the question is deceptively simple.

ii) Suppose, for the sake of argument, you answered in the affirmative.
Does that mean religion is dangerous? No. It’s not religion that makes you kill
someone, but the hypothetical.

That’s the thing about hypothetical questions. Because it’s
a hypothetical situation, we can make it do exactly what we want it to do. We
can frame a hypothetical to yield any desired result. The answer is inescapable
because the hypothetical artificially narrows your range of options. Given
those options, you can only give one or two answers. But why is that a given?

If your answer is morally unacceptable, blame the
hypothetical, not religion. That’s just an artifact of the hypothetical. The
shocking consequences isn’t the result of religion, but the hypothetical
framework.

iii) Apropos (ii), it’s easy to dream up hypotheticals that
generate moral dilemmas. Ethicists like to do that:

iv) However, the atheist might press the point. He might say
this isn’t just hypothetical. He might say there really are people who think
God told them to kill someone.

But that’s ambiguous. Does the atheist mean there are people
who hear voices telling them to commit murder? That may well be true. But in
that event, we have to recast the question:

“If you were psychotic, and you heard a voice telling you to
kill somebody, would you do it?”

I suppose the answer would be “yes.” So what? Don’t blame
religion. Blame schizophrenia.

After all, the atheist doesn’t think God is really telling
anyone to commit murder, since the atheist doesn’t believe in God in the first
place. So even if the psychotic thought he was following orders from God, the
atheist doesn’t think he was following orders from God, even if the psychotic
is convinced God was speaking to him.

So why would religion be to blame, rather than mental
illness? You don’t have to be religious to be criminally insane. A psychotic
atheist can hear voices too.

v) Let’s recast the question in atheistic terms. Suppose the
atheist is a physicalist. Indeed, many atheists subscribe to physicalism. And
even secular dualists are usually grudging dualists. They’d rather be
physicalists.

But in that case, the atheist is really asking: “If your
brain told you to kill someone, would you do it?”

Well, within the framework of physicalism, the answer would
be “yes.” Given physicalism, you have no choice but to obey whatever your brain
tells you to do. That’s because you are your brain. There’s no you, over and
above your brain; there’s no mind, distinct from your brain, to censor what
your brain is telling you to do.

You’re in no position to evaluate what you’re brain is
telling you is real. For you rely on your brain to tell you what’s real.

Suppose a Christian thinks he hears God telling him to kill
someone. According to physicalism, that just means his brain is telling him to
kill somebody. Is religion to blame, or his brain?

In fact, if physicalism is true, then everybody who commits
a heinous crime was doing so because his brain told him to do it. If an atheist
commits murder, his brain told him to commit murder. Does that prove how
dangerous atheism is? Does that just prove how dangerous physicalism is?

vi) If someone says they hear voices telling him to commit
murder, a common Christian explanation is demonic possession. It’s not the Holy
Spirit, but evil spirits, telling him to do that.

Of course, Christians can also believe in psychotic
behavior. Maybe he hears voices because he has brain cancer.

An atheist might counter, “But what if you were sure that
God was telling you to kill someone–even though we know that’s delusive”?

But in that case, the hypothetical stipulates that you can’t
help yourself. You don’t know any better. You lack control. In that situation,
aren’t you in a condition of diminished responsibility?

vi) The atheist might say this isn’t just hypothetical, for
we have divine commands to kill people in the Bible. Take Abraham and Isaac.

But the atheist challenge is ambiguous. If God really does
command you to kill someone, then you should obey God’s command. But if God
really isn’t commanding you to kill someone, then you shouldn’t. So what does
the ostensible dilemma amount to?

After all, there are atheists who believe in moral
obligations to kill people. There are secular utilitarians who think that we
should take one innocent life to save ten innocent lives. Their value system
requires them to do that. Yet utilitarianism is a respectable position in
secular ethics.

vi) Moreover, most Christians aren’t voluntarists. We don’t
think God would command just anything for the heck of it. That’s a problem with
this hypothetical questions, viz., “What if God commanded you to blow up a bus
full of school children.”

We have no reason to think God would command that. And if he
really wanted them dead, he could do it himself.

I touched on this in my post which I linked to above. Most charismatics know enough about theology to know that no private revelation should contradict the Bible (especially the New Covenant). Since both the Mosaic Covenant and the New (Messianic) Covenant prohibit murder and human sacrifice, Christians shouldn't murder or make human sacrifice (especially since all OT sacrifices were shadows of Christ's perfect sacrifice).